Study on Western people learning simplified Chinese

[jmtpong]

Hi everyone. I am currently doing a project for my thesis on western people learning simplified Chinese. I have put an on-line test at this adress :

http://pengtaoyu.free.fr

If you are a student who learn Chinese and also has not got any Chinese heritage no matter at which Chinese proficiency level you are, you will be included as one of my participants! What you need to do is just go for the website and have a go. Don't worry if you are stuck on some point; you could just leave it as you wish but please try to finish it till the end. Thank you! You are a star!!

If you are interested in the data that I have collected in this study, drop me a message.

Also, if you want to know how well you performed, drop me a message after you completed the test. I won't answer before late september because of my thesis, so please be patient

[The Elf Piper]

Oops, I tried to go back to re-read the instructions for the second part and lost it all.

The first part was very interesting though!!!

[jmtpong]

I guess I will copy the instructions on all pages for the second part.

Thanks for taking part to the study

[Xiao Kui]

I found the first 2 parts tricky, the rest was easier. Thanks for the opportunity to participate - it was fun.

[jmtpong]

I am glad you found it fun, I though it might get a little boring.

Thanks for participating

[Shadowdh]

Did my bit too... excellent test, although I got frustrated cos I could not remember some of the bits... but that is my hurdle not the tests... well done!

I would be interested in getting my results but its not too important... I know its not going to be as good as it should have been...

[Hofmann]

Whoa, there was some weird stuff on there. (I looked at it; didn't complete. I'm learning in T Chinese.) I guess you can't tell me about this test, right?

[jbradfor]

That was somewhat fun. Wish you would tell us the answers to the questions!

However, I did run into one problem. On the first test, I forgot to answer one question. So I got the error message and went back, but all the old answers were gone! You should change it to be more forgiving...

[jmtpong]

I guess you can't tell me about this test, right?

Sorry but, what do you mean ?

However, I did run into one problem. On the first test, I forgot to answer one question. So I got the error message and went back, but all the old answers were gone! You should change it to be more forgiving...

Thank you for your comment. I changed my test to be more forgiving indeed, you don't need to answer all questions anymore.

I will publish the answers when I finish collecting data.

[imron]

Not to sound cynical or anything, but over the years we've had loads of people come by asking forum members to participate in surveys and tests. None of them have ever come back to discuss or talk about their results (despite promises and assurances to do so). I hope you'll be the first

[Hofmann]

Sorry but, what do you mean ?

I mean, you're obviously wrote this test to collect data. I'm interested in how you plan to use this data, and why you wrote this test. However, I thought you (as the experimenter) could not tell us (the participants) about the experiment, as it might mess up the results.

[jmtpong]

Not to sound cynical or anything, but over the years we've had loads of people come by asking forum members to participate in surveys and tests. None of them have ever come back to discuss or talk about their results (despite promises and assurances to do so). I hope you'll be the first

To be honest, due to my University policy, I won't be able to publish my thesis on the web. However, if anybody is interesed in the results and conclusions of this particular study, I will send him/her these.

I mean, you're obviously wrote this test to collect data. I'm interested in how you plan to use this data, and why you wrote this test. However, I thought you (as the experimenter) could not tell us (the participants) about the experiment, as it might mess up the results.

This is absolutely right

I will tell you after the experiment after I finish collecting data.

Thanks again to all the participants !

[imron]

You don't need to publish your entire thesis on the web, but surely you'd still be able to come back and provide a little more information regarding what the study was about, as well discuss in general some of the interesting findings.

[imron]

Just taking the test now, I got the following warnings at the top of each page, each time I submitted my hand-drawn character components:

Warning: fopen(15b6bc2eb14dab9a16c70b1804a46461/components7.jpg) [function.fopen]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /mnt/102/sda/5/2/pengtaoyu/partthree_eight.php on line 10

Warning: fwrite(): supplied argument is not a valid stream resource in /mnt/102/sda/5/2/pengtaoyu/partthree_eight.php on line 12

Warning: fclose(): supplied argument is not a valid stream resource in /mnt/102/sda/5/2/pengtaoyu/partthree_eight.php on line 14

[renzhe]

Yes, a paragraph or two describing what you were testing and what your results suggest would be very interesting to many people on this forum. Something like "people who learned radicals were better at recognising characters" or "people who knew >1000 characters did significantly better than...", just a quick summary.

I did the first part, but the second part required flash (which I don't have installed) so I couldn't continue. I found the first part easy, but it is probably tricky for people who don't have a good grip on radicals and don't know many characters.

[jmtpong]

Just taking the test now, I got the following warnings at the top of each page, each time I submitted my hand-drawn character components:...

Thank you for the feedback, it should be working properly now.

Yes, a paragraph or two describing what you were testing and what your results suggest would be very interesting to many people on this forum. Something like "people who learned radicals were better at recognising characters" or "people who knew >1000 characters did significantly better than...", just a quick summary.

You don't need to publish your entire thesis on the web, but surely you'd still be able to come back and provide a little more information regarding what the study was about, as well discuss in general some of the interesting findings.

Agreed

[imron]

And the same messages again for all of section 6 just now. Does this mean it didn't manage to save my results?

[HashiriKata]

I got the following warnings at the top of each page, each time I submitted my hand-drawn character components

Sounds like the machine is quite intelligent and you need to improve your character-drawing skills

[imron]

My logic was the opposite, namely that the system was so overwhelmed by a foreigner writing Chinese that it didn't know what do After all, that's what seems to happen in real-life if I'm filling in some form at the bank or wherever and a Chinese person happens to be watching me fill it in.

[Lu]

I tried twice but got a database error both times.

Well, don't know if I'm the right kind of subject anyway. I learned traditional first, simplified after.